


roses are black; violets are too

by clarinetta



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blindness, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 23:48:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4369040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>kinkmeme prompt: Foggy has some kind of degenerative eye condition and he is slowly losing his sight. But he hasn't told Matt. He hasn't told anyone. He's only just beginning to accept it himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	roses are black; violets are too

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, blind. I did do some research, but any mistakes are definitely my own.

The day Foggy finds out he's going blind, he lets go of the last shred of bitterness he felt against Matt for keeping his Daredevil secret. He finally understands, as he walks out of the hospital doors, fingers trailing along the brick wall, how easy it is to keep a secret; you just...keep your mouth shut. Let it slip from your consciousness when you're around people. Really learn to believe it when you say the redness in your eyes is just from looking at the computer screen too much, not enough caffeine, too much alcohol, lack of sleep.

It's disturbingly simple, Foggy thinks, to not tell them. Inaction is easier than action. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. The law of inertia is on his side.

(Of course, physics being on his side doesn't really help. Foggy may be a clumsy protective teddy bear to his friends but he's never been anything less than brutal with himself. He knows he's a hypocrite and a liar, and he knows there's no good reason to keep this from his friends, except that sometimes he thinks about saying it out loud and he can taste bile rising in his throat when he imagines the looks of sympathy on their faces. He doesn't want it. Doesn't want their help, doesn't want the jokes to change, doesn't want Karen tiptoeing around him, doesn't want Matt tentatively trying to commiserate. Because even though Matt's eyes really don't work, it's not the same, not the same at all. He doesn't think he can stand needing to be led, to be taught.)

Foggy knows it's going to change everything, and it's the last thing he wants. So he keeps his secret. He lets his friends believe he's just tired, just stressed, just broke.

He'd told Matt, once, that he'd like some secrets. He never meant this.

\--

He gets glasses because he can't afford the surgeries. Karen compliments the frames, making some joke or other about them being sexy. Foggy grins, finger-guns in her direction and clicks his tongue. He lets Matt run his hands over them, readjusting his mental image of Foggy. When he hands them back, he says, "Not as cool as mine," and Foggy smacks him playfully.

_Easy_ , he thinks as he slides the frames back on. _This is easy._

He practices walking around his apartment with his eyes closed, trying to sense the placement of objects by familiarity and sound. He counts the paces in his daily routines--approximately ten steps from the bedroom to the bathroom, twenty-three from the bathroom to the fridge, and so on. He practices Braille (after thanking the heavens he taught himself after meeting Matt). Surreptitiously, he studies how Matt uses his cane, how it swings in a low arc around his feet, wide but not too wide. He notices how people go out of their way to either avoid Matt or help him with things he doesn't need. How people treat him like a child, like something beautiful and infinitely breakable.

_That's going to be me soon,_ Foggy thinks once, and has to refrain from kicking a wall. He hates seeing people do this to Matt; the resigned look on Matt's face, the stiffness in his posture, the way he always refuses to even touch Foggy's elbow for the rest of the day, to win some kind of macho independence war with himself. Foggy always despised those days, but he never fully understood. He does now. He's never been the macho I-can-take-care-of-myself type, really, but he knows the value of personal independence.

It gets harder to read paperwork first, then the computer screen; he scours about twenty pawn shops before he can find a Braille display to buy on the cheap. He watches how Matt uses his, when they're working together in the meeting room, practices at home before really needing it so that Matt won't know. He does some research and applies for a free cane from the National Federation of the Blind and, when it arrives, starts to practice when he's alone.

For the most part, Foggy's pretty sure he can handle this. He's a go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and nothing if not infallibly pragmatic.

But sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night in complete darkness and the panic is all-encompassing, horrible, unending. He fumbles for the lamp and stares at the light for hours, sometimes through tears, trying to judge if the halo his failing eyes are causing is getting bigger or more hazy. Those are the nights that the thoughts he usually manages to keep at bay with practicalities come crashing into him like tidal waves. 

_There will be a day when I will stop being able to see Karen’s smile. I’ll never see another rainbow, another Batman movie, Matt’s stupid fucking Daredevil suit. It’ll just be black black black and oh god I’m going to go_ mad--

He reteaches himself every morning to smile and ignore the way his peripheral vision is steadily fading, how the details of things are getting fuzzier every day despite his glasses. And he practices everything with his eyes closed, and he laughs like he always does, and he memorizes how Karen looks with her bright hair tucked behind her ears, and he reconstructs Matt's crinkly-eyed smile in his mind until he could draw it freehand, and he does not tell them.

\--

(Of course, eventually, they do start to notice something is wrong. And Foggy knows that once that happens, they won't let it go until they figure it out, because Karen is an actual bloodhound disguised as a human being, and Matt is. Well. Matt. But he's not ready to tell them. He buttons his lip and laughs off their concern, teasingly calling them worrywarts and changing their names in his phone to "Mom" and "Dad." Neither of them buy it completely, but it gives Foggy a little more time to breathe.)

\--

He tells them separately, Karen first, because that feels easier. He waits one night until Matt has gone home (watches him get a cab and ride away, just to make sure he's really gone), then pulls up a folding chair to Karen's desk and sits down heavily. She looks up from her paperwork, eyebrows raised, and Foggy goes cold with the knowledge that, even this close, he can't see her clearly anymore. Her hair blurs into a blonde curtain around her pale face. He used to be able to count the freckles on her beautiful neck; now he can barely see what color her eyes are in the dim light. _Blue,_ he thinks, swallowing. _Bright blue, the color of the autumn sky._

She closes her laptop and waits patiently while Foggy stumbles around words, stutters through a few half-incoherent lead-ins, before he finally cuts all the bullshit and just says it, flat out, for the first time ever out loud. "Karen, I'm going blind."

He's pretty sure she blinks at that, but he can't tell for sure. "Um," she says. "What?"

"Trust me," Foggy says. "I know how implausible this sounds. But. Yeah. There it is."

She's silent for a long moment, and Foggy desperately wishes he could read her microexpressions like he used to. "God, Foggy," she says quietly, after a while. "I'm... I'm sorry, I'm so... Um. How long, how long have you known?"

"About two months," he admits. "Well, officially. I knew something was wrong before that, I just didn't know exactly what, and by the time I got around to going to the doctor, it was too far gone to be curable. There's a surgery they can do to halt the progression, but." He shakes his head. "It really only works in about twenty-five percent of cases on people who are at the stage I'm at, and it's so far out of my price range that I'm pretty sure it's actually in the stratosphere."

He can hear Karen sucking on her teeth. Nervous, trying not to take a wrong step. "How bad is it...now?" she asks. Hesitant, but too worried about him not to ask.

He shakes his head, his throat tightening a little at the concern in her voice. "It's not too bad," he lies, then shakes his head again, dispelling the lie. "Actually, it kind of sucks," he admits, and they both huff out a little breath that was meant to be a laugh. "Even with the glasses, it's hazy. Everything's darker. Peripheral vision's basically shot. It's harder to read, too. Good days, I can manage about an eighteen point font from a normal distance. Bad days... It's just easier to use Braille, to be honest."

"You know Braille?"

Foggy nods. "Taught myself a few months after I met Matt. Thought it might come in handy someday, but I never imagined this particular scenario."

"I can print things bigger for you," Karen suggests, latching onto something she can help with. "Or just print it out twice in Braille, if you ask. If it's a...a Bad Day." He can hear the capital letters in her voice; he's started thinking about them that way, too, as Bad Days and Good Days. He does not say that the Bad Days are far outnumbering the Good Days lately, and soon he won't be able to read fifty point font on his best days, let alone eighteen.

Still, getting things printed in Braille will be helpful, and Foggy says softly, "Thanks, Karen."

"Whatever you need," she says earnestly, and reaches over the desk and takes his hand. It's a little awkward but completely sincere, and God, Foggy loves her. He squeezes her hand and tries to smile. It comes out a little shaky.

"Does Matt know?" she asks after a moment.

"Nope," Foggy says, and chuckles to himself. "How pathetic is it that I haven't told my blind best friend that I'm going blind?"

Karen laughs a little, too. "It's not pathetic, Foggy," she assures him with a squeeze of his fingers. "But maybe you should? He could... I don't know, maybe he could help. Teach you the ways of the Force."

Foggy laughs genuinely at that. "Can you imagine Matt with a lightsaber?" he giggles.

Karen covers her mouth, snickering. "You could use them as canes," she suggests. "No one would ever bump into you again."

"I'd probably end up taking myself out at the ankles," Foggy jokes.

"Be optimistic," she encourages him. "I'm sure you'd only take out a toe or two."

Their laughter slowly turns into the occasional snicker, and when they're finally calm, Karen adopts her serious voice and says, "Listen, I get why you didn't want to tell anyone, but. If anyone can help, Foggy, it's Matt."

_It's not the same!_ Foggy wants to yell. All his laughter is gone, and in its place is a spiraling awful blackness he's been trying to avoid thinking about since this whole things started. He looks into the black and sees Matt there, still able to hear heartbeats and cross the street without help and move as gracefully as a seasoned boxer. But Foggy... He won't have those things. He'll be a clumsy dead weight, needing help with everything no matter how much he practices alone. He'll be a chore. Not worth the effort.

It's stupid, completely ridiculous to think these things; he knows that his and Matt's friendship is stronger than that, but he thinks them anyway, and that cold terror he usually only feels in the dead of night starts to creep in.

"Foggy?" Karen says.

He shakes his head, trying to clear away the fear, but he can feel it crawling up the back of his spine. "Yeah, I know," he says. "I will. I just." He purses his lips to keep them from quivering. "I don't want to be--" _Oh God, no, I am not going to cry,_ he thinks, but his eyes start to burn anyway. He takes a deep breath, and it shakes without his permission.

"Foggy," Karen whispers.

He covers his face with his hands. "Shit."

Heels click against the hardwood floor and then Karen is kneeling beside his chair, one hand on his back, the other on his knee. "I am scared fucking shitless, Karen," he admits through his fingers. He tries to laugh, but it comes out embarrassingly close to a sob. "I'm practicing everything all the time, I'm trying to be practical and learn everything, but I'm just kidding myself, I-I have no idea how Matt does it, and I'm not like him, you know? I can't--" His voice abruptly cuts out, dropping away in a choked-off sob. His hands are clammy with sweat and tears. "I can't do this," he finally whispers. He realizes that this has been a long time coming, that this is a cliff he's been teetering at the edge of while turning his head and pretending he's still on solid ground. He feels like he's finally looking down into that chasm and seeing nothing but a long fall and jagged rocks at the bottom.

When he comes through the other side of it god-knows-how-long later, Karen is still there, kneeling, one hand smoothing his hair, humming something familiar.

"...Is that the Imperial March?" he asks.

"It was the first thing that came to mind," she admits, and they both laugh a little too hard for something that wasn't all that funny. If Karen notices the slightly hysterical hitch still in Foggy's voice, she doesn't mention it. Her gentle soft hand runs through his hair one last time, still smiling.

"You look like you could use a drink or five," she says, and Foggy knows it's an invitation.

"I probably could," Foggy agrees. "But I think you were right. I need to get this talk with Matt over with, and, uh. No time like the present, right?"

Karen nods, understanding. "I'm gonna finish up some paperwork and head home," she says and pats him on the shoulder as she stands, knees creaking from kneeling for so long. "If you need anything, seriously--"

"I know where you are," Foggy finishes, and the smile he gives her is small but real.

Foggy calls Matt's phone as soon as he gets down to the first floor of their building. The light is so dim and grimy in this hallway that he's pretty sure he would have trouble seeing anything with his good eyes; as it is, he has to feel his way to the door to make it out into the brighter lights of Hell's Kitchen just after dusk. Cars with their headlights on flash by, disorienting him a little, and he leans back against the wall, the back of his shoulder grinding into the edge of the Nelson and Murdock sign, and listens to the tone of Matt's phone ringing. Two, three, four rings, and then Matt's flat lifeless voicemail. He closes his eyes and knocks his head back against the brick. There's a migraine starting to build behind his right eye, which is failing slightly faster than the left one; the doctor had warned him that migraines were a possibility as he passed into the later stages of the disease, but he'd been lucky so far.

_Guess my luck ran out,_ he thinks grimly. He hangs up without leaving Matt a message and stays there, against the wall with his eyes shut, phone hanging loosely in his fingers. Cocking his head slightly to one side, he tries to tune himself to his city, tries to pick out individual cars and footsteps and the scent of his favourite bakery across the street. He thinks he catches a whiff of something like Marci's favourite perfume, but when he opens his eyes, there's no one anywhere near him. He sighs, runs one hand down his face, and the sounds and smells of Hell's Kitchen blur back together, indistinguishable and noisy and overpowering as they have always been for him. _I can't do this,_ he thinks for the second time of the night, and his throat tightens again. His heart is heavy in his chest, beating so loud and fast that Matt can probably hear it from his apartment fifteen blocks away. He tries, uselessly, to calm himself, to reassure himself that Matt isn't going to shed him like dead skin when he finds out, but before he can steady himself out, his phone rings and startles him nearly out of his shoes. Matt's ringtone.

He answers with his eyes closed on the first try. ( _Getting better at this,_ he thinks.) "Hey."

"Hey, sorry, I was in the shower when you called," Matt's voice says, cheerfully enough. Foggy takes a deep silent breath, trying again to calm his heart so Matt won't hear it fluttering. He wishes for the millionth time that he could tell whether or not Matt is lying. But he can't, so he straightens his back, leans away from their sign. Brightens his voice.

"It's okay. Are you, uh. Doing your thing tonight?"

There's a long beat before Matt answers, and god, Foggy hates that they still can't talk about Daredevil without their recent fight rising immediately to the surface of Things They Can't Say.

"Yes," Matt answers. Stiff, awkward.

Foggy sighs and rubs his forehead. The migraine is starting to really throb, and he knows it's only going to get worse as the night progresses. "Do you think you could stand to take a break tonight? We could hang out at Josie's or something."

"Foggy, you know I can't," Matt says patiently, but with a little bit of an edge to his voice, like a teacher explaining something to a child for the hundredth time. Anger surges in Foggy's chest at the note of condescension in Matt's tone; for a terrifying second he hates Matt. "Not with that child trafficking ring meeting tonight," Matt continues. "Raincheck on Josie's?" And damn him, he sounds so tentative and hopeful that all of Foggy's anger drains instantly. He drops his head, eyes closed against the insistent pounding in his temple, and nods.

"Yeah, okay," he answers, and hopes beyond hope that Matt doesn't hear how rough his voice sounds. He hangs up before Matt has a chance to respond.

He doesn't expect a call back, and doesn't get one.

\--

Foggy is right about the migraine. He tosses and turns all night, trying to find a position that doesn't make him want to die, but when his alarm goes off at seven the next morning, he practically gags with pain as the sound screams in his ears. He texts Karen that he won't be in to work until maybe later in the day, if at all; she answers, but he knows he's not coherent enough to read it or even find the button to make his phone read it aloud to him, so he just leaves it. He rolls over, covers his head with his comforter, and waits to pass out.

It's around noon when the headache finally recedes enough to fall asleep; unfortunately, after what feels like about thirty seconds of unconsciousness, a loud rapping at his front door jerks him awake again. Wincing at the sound, he buries his head further into his pillow, hoping that whoever it is will give up and go away, but then the knocking comes again, louder than before, and along with it Matt's voice, calling for him.

Foggy still can't really open his eyes without wanting to scream--everything is a horrible mixture of bright fuzzy light and dim shadows. So he keeps his eyes closed and trails his fingers along the walls as he heads toward the door, silently counting the steps. He only trips once, over an umbrella that had gotten knocked over, and he smiles a little, proud of himself. He keeps his eyes shut when he opens the door for Matt; Matt won't have any idea anyway.

"Morning, sunshine," Matt says.

"Ha ha," Foggy says dryly, then bites back a moan at the volume of his own voice. "Hilarious. What are you doing here?"

"Karen said you were sick, and you weren't answering our texts," Matt explains. "I wanted to come by and give you the file on a new case we just got this morning."

"You sure you didn't just miss the sultry sound of my voice?" Foggy jokes weakly.

"That may have been a factor," Matt tosses back.

"I knew it. What's the case?"

Matt takes a deep breath that's not quite steady. "You'd find out if you took the file I've been holding out for you since you opened the door."

Foggy suddenly, intimately understands the meaning of the phrase "ice chips skittering up the spine." He breathes in sharply, then cracks his eyes open. Matt is a dark blur in front of him; it takes a moment, but Foggy squints and Matt's hand, holding out a bland file folder, swims into what passes for focus these days. He takes the folder from Matt, and before he even has a chance to open it, Matt continues, "You wanna tell me why Karen printed out this file in both ink and Braille for you?"

Foggy drags in a deep breath. It's more than a little shivery, and not just from the migraine still pounding away in his temple. "I was going to tell you today anyway. You might as well come in."

Matt does. He moves around Foggy's living room almost easier than Foggy does, smoothly sidestepping the umbrella Foggy tripped over, and sits tensely on Foggy's couch. Holding back a groan of pain, Foggy lowers himself into the chair opposite Matt.

There's a taut silence, which Foggy ends up breaking. "I don't really know how to start."

"Are you blind, Foggy?" Matt asks bluntly.

Foggy blinks. "That's one way to start," he mumbles to himself. Runs his fingers through his hair. "Not yet," he says after a moment's thought. "But... Soon. I will be. It's a degenerative disease, probably genetic, super rare. Like rare enough that it doesn't have a name yet. Hey, maybe they'll name it after me," he jokes, but Matt very pointedly does not laugh. Foggy sobers up quickly. "Sorry. They found it a few months ago, when I went to get my vision tested. Things were going kind of blurry and dark around the edges, but I thought it was just normal. Getting older, you know, you need glasses. But they found this instead. I just gestured to my eyes, by the way. It causes vision loss and migraines, which I had the pleasure of experiencing this morning. Eventually I'll be completely blind. Like you but without the extra cool stuff."

"There aren't any treatments?" Matt sounds confused, almost incredulous.

"A couple," Foggy replies, dragging his hand through his hair again. It's greasy, tangled. He needs a shower and about forty-eight hours of sleep. "They don't always work even under the best of circumstances, and they caught mine pretty late in its progression. I'm allergic to the only FDA-approved medication. And the surgery--" He shrugs helplessly. "Every doctor I've talked to and every source I can find says it only works about twenty-five to thirty percent of the time at this stage. And even if it does work, all it does is halt the degeneration. It doesn't give me any vision back that I've already lost." He pauses, then adds, "Plus, money, you know. It's a thing I don't have."

"So--" Through Foggy's hazy vision, Matt's frame looks even more tense than before. "So what, you're just--resigning yourself to this?"

"No," Foggy starts. He thinks he sees where this is going, and he's so tired.

Matt cuts him off, stands up and starts pacing without seeming to realize he's doing it. "This isn't like getting your tonsils taken out or losing the tip of your pinky or something, Foggy, this is--this is forever, this changes everything! How you move, how you work, how people treat you--this--this isn't a blindfold you can just take off when you're done. It's permanent. Once your eyes are gone, they're _gone._ And you're telling me there's nothing that can be done to fix it?" His voice is getting more and more agitated, his footsteps louder, turning into something closer to stomping than pacing. "Have you called your insurance company about this?" he asks, almost vicious in his zealousness. "Gotten a second opinion? Anything?"

Foggy waits for a moment, drawing out the silence, hoping that it'll make Matt calm down a little. "You done?" he asks finally, through gritted teeth.

Matt's breathing is still a little heavy, like he just went three rounds with a punching bag, but he quiets after a minute and sits back down.

Foggy starts talking without really knowing where he's going. He feels like he's ripping open his chest cavity and baring his entire soul. "Yes, to your first and second questions. I have, in fact, called my insurance company so many times that I've memorized their entire automated menu system. Did you know it takes a minimum of seven different menus before you get an actual human to talk to? And yeah, I've gotten a second opinion. And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, when I couldn't even afford the first one. They all say the same thing: it's late stage, it's incurable, better buy your cane now, good thing you already know Braille, right, haha, I'm a funny doctor."

He takes a long breath and lets it out slow, to calm himself. "I know," he says, quiet again, "how this must seem to you. It seems like an insult. Like I'm just letting it happen, whereas you had no choice in the matter, no warning. But this isn't about you. I love you, Matty, but you have this tendency to--to think pretty exclusively about how stuff relates to you, and I get that, that's normal human behavior, but this is a completely separate situation. And I promise you, I have done everything--" His voice wavers, and he stops for a moment, lets himself breathe before continuing. "I have done _everything_ I can think of to make this stop. And nothing has worked. So I'm dealing with it. I've already been through the there-has-to-be-something-we-can-do stage and I've moved on to the let's-accept-this-for-what-it-is-and-roll-with-it stage. But...I'm still fucking terrified, you know?" His voice wavers again, but this time he doesn't stop. "It's so gradual, it's like you almost don't notice it's happening, until one day you open up a book you've read a million times and you can't see the words, no matter how much you squint. And you start missing things in conversation, little gestures that people make in the periphery that you should be able to see.

"What I'm trying to say is, I need you to be with me on this. You and Karen. I've been doing this alone so far, but I can't anymore. I don't want to."

Matt is silent and still, so still it almost seems like he's holding his breath. Then he bows his head, removes his glasses and runs his fingers through his hair, mirroring Foggy. "I'm sorry, Foggy," he says. "I didn't mean to--"

"I know," Foggy interrupts with a tired, forced smile. "Let's start over. Good afternoon, Matt. How's your day?"

Matt chuckles and plays along. "Pretty slow and uneventful. "How was yours?"

"Not so good, my friend. See, I found out a couple of months ago that I'm going blind and I decided to tell my best friend about it today, except he confronted me about it first."

"Oh, how did that go?" Matt's still humoring him, which Foggy is grateful for.

"Terrible," Foggy fake-confesses. "So far, anyway. But I think we can turn it around."

Even with his shit eyes and a lingering migraine, he can sense Matt's smile faltering. Matt leans forward again, earnest and sincere. "I am sorry, Foggy," he says seriously. "I shouldn't have gone off like that. You're right, this isn't about me."

"It's fine," Foggy says, heart racing. He doesn't want this to go any deeper than it already has or he might actually cry, and he's only just got the headache down to a manageable level of pain. "No harm done."

But Matt's frame stays tense. His uncovered eyes make his face look bare, stripped almost naked. It makes Foggy's throat tight, that he gets to see this, no matter how blurry. "I'm still going to call your insurance company. I'll make an appointment with my own doctor. He specializes in working with blind people. I know you've done everything you can, but I don't believe there's nothing at all that can be done. As for all the...other stuff...I don't know how much help I'm going to be," Matt admits. "But I can try. I'll do--whatever you need. What do you need me to do?"

_Don't give up on me,_ Foggy thinks, but says instead, "You could start narrating your expressions, maybe."

Matt jerks back, badly startled. "It is that far along already?" he asks, and Foggy knows he's beating himself up for not noticing it sooner.

Foggy says truthfully, "There are good days and bad days. Today's bad because of the migraine. It'll help to get into the habit before you really need to."

"I can do that," Matt agrees.

"You did learn from the best."

"That I did."

\--

Three weeks after Matt confronts him, Foggy wakes up and can't see anything out of his right eye.

It takes him a long, panicked, half-awake moment to realize it's because his bed sheet is covering it, and when he pulls it off, his vision is no worse or better than the day before. He spends far too many minutes trying to calm himself down; then, once he has his breath back, he immediately dials his mother and agrees to the visit she's been hounding him about.

"Did something happen, Foggy?" she asks, her voice tinny and loud over the phone speaker. "How are your eyes?"

"No better or worse than when you asked yesterday," Foggy says with a long-suffering smile. He'd told his family about his disease after Matt confronted him, and they'd been nothing but supportive and helpful, if a little overbearing about the whole thing. "I just... I think you were right, what you said about seeing things I've always wanted to see. I was kind of putting it off, but. How's tomorrow sound?"

"Oh, I'm so glad, Foggy," she gushes. "Your nieces have been dying to see you! Tomorrow sounds perfect. Your sister can pick you up since she lives closest."

"Sounds good, Mom," Foggy says. "I'm headed to work, so I'll talk to you later. Love you."

They finally have a break in their caseload that week, so as they're all cleaning up to go home, Foggy tells them his plans to spend the weekend with his family.

"Oh, that sounds nice!" Karen says brightly. "Where do they live?"

"Mom and Dad moved to Philly recently, so we're all meeting at their new place. We're gonna do some sightseeing." Foggy shoulders his bag, closes the door to his office with a soft click. "They thought it would be a good idea to see them before, you know. I can't anymore. It's no Paris, but it'll be nice anyway."

"Paris?" Karen sounds confused. Matt joins them in the main room, cane in hand, closing his office door behind him.

"I've always wanted to see Paris," Foggy says, and he can't help the wistfulness that creeps into his voice. "Now I guess I won't."

He wants to make a joke, but for once his mind is blank, devoid of humor. The silence weighs heavy on all of them until Matt breaks it.

"When will you be back?"

"Monday evening most likely. My aunts can't make it until Sunday and I want to be able to spend some time with them too. Unless you guys need me..."

"No, I think we can handle our lack of caseload without you for one day," Karen says, and Foggy can practically hear her rolling her eyes.

Foggy grins and cocks an eyebrow. "You sure?" he teases. "Cuz I can stay if you--"

"Go on, go see your family," Matt says with a laugh, manhandling Foggy around towards the door and shoving him out into the hallway. "I promise the building will still be standing when you get back!"

Foggy, trailing his fingers along the wall for support, walks out on the soft wave of their laughter.

\--

He has his sister drop him off back at the office early Monday evening. He's exhausted, but about as content as he can be, under the circumstances. It's been a rare Good Day, no headache on the horizon, and despite traffic and construction, he and his family had been able to hit all the places he'd wanted to visit. It's nearing six p.m., late enough that he could easily justify heading home for the night, but he has a little paperwork he wants to finish while he can still use his eyes to do it.

Matt is sitting in a folding chair in front of Karen's desk, leaning over intently, but when Foggy opens the door, the conversation they were having screeches to a giant halt.

"Hi, Foggy!" Karen chirps in an overly bright voice.

"Hello, Karen," Foggy drawls. "Whatcha talkin' about?"

"Oh nothing," she says airily. And Foggy can't hear heartbeats like Matt can, but he knows a bald-faced lie when he hears one.

"You know, for a woman who works in a law firm, you're pretty terrible at bullshitting," Foggy informs her as he pulls up another folding chair and sits down.

"How was sightseeing?" Matt asks.

"Oh, nuh-uh," Foggy says teasingly, wagging his finger. "You guys aren't getting off so easy. You were talking about me, weren't you? Come on," he says, making a 'come at me' gesture. "Tell your old Foggy the truth."

Karen's guilty gaze slides over to Matt, who shrugs. "It's a little earlier than we planned, but I think it'll be fine," he says. "Food's ready, anyway."

"Food?" Foggy's stomach grumbles with hope. "What's going on?"

Karen and Matt stand up in sync with each other, and Matt feels his way toward their little kitchenette while Karen walks around her desk and holds out her hand for Foggy to take. "Come on," she says with a dazzling, nervous smile. "We want to show you something."

Foggy swallows and takes her hand, suddenly apprehensive. She leads him out to the hallway and up the stairs that lead to the roof, four floors up. Foggy can feel her vibrating minutely where their fingers intertwine. The staircase is dark, so he relies almost totally on her to lead him, and she does it with a shaky kind of nervous grace, softly informing him of landings, when to turn and step up, when to move aside for someone else coming down. When they finally reach the roof access door, huffing and puffing a little, Karen takes a deep, steadying breath. Then says in passable French, "Bienvenue a la Tour Eiffel!" and, with a flourish of her arm, she throws the door open.

The rooftop is awash in light, both from the setting sun and dozens of soft colored string lights hanging all around the waist-high brick wall that forms the ledge. Near the wall in the far corner, there sits a round table with a white tablecloth laid out over it, silverware and wine glasses immaculately placed, set for three people. The wine glasses reflect the lights, making blurry prisms dance over the brick. Foggy's failing eyes create halos around the lights, already fuzzy, but for once he's grateful; it makes everything look soft and cozy and warm, despite it being October in the middle of Hell's Kitchen. And when Foggy walks onto the roof and turns to look back at the wall with the door, he finally understands: Karen has painted a giant Eiffel Tower over the old brick, streaked with color to make it easier for Foggy to see, strings of yellow lights hung along the painted beams.

"That's...uh..." Foggy says, faintly. "I think that's illegal."

Laughter bursts from Karen's throat, genuine and happy and a little relieved. "Maybe," she agrees. "Like it? I know Hell's Kitchen isn't exactly the City of Lights or anything, but the view is still pretty decent."

Foggy can feel her eyes on him, can feel the explanations bubbling up in her throat and her pushing them down, and he wishes she would look away for a minute because there's a good chance he's about to burst into tears. He runs his hand lightly over Karen's painting, the backs of his fingers touching the warm lights, and yes, he's pretty sure he's going to cry any minute.

"You brought Paris to me," he murmurs, awestruck, and at that moment, Matt bursts through the roof access door in the most ridiculous chef hat that Foggy has ever laid eyes on. It poofs high into the air, slightly askew on Matt's head, with "KISS THE COOK!" written on the front in Karen's tilted scrawl.

"Dinner is served!" he announces proudly, and that's when Foggy notices the round cookie tray balanced perfectly in Matt's right hand. There are three plates on the tray, piled high with steaming food, and a dark bottle of what Foggy assumes to be French wine sits in the middle, like a centerpiece.

Completely overwhelmed, Foggy leans again Karen's Eiffel Tower; he can feel tears welling up and his smile shaking, but he doesn't care one bit. Something warm is growing in his chest, expanding outward to his limbs, heating his chilly hands, filling up the sad places in his mind with love, until he feels he might explode. He grabs Karen first, because she's standing closer and doesn't have food in her hands, and spins her into a huge bear hug. She holds on tight, laughing gently, trying not to trip over her own feet. Finally he lets go, and she squeezes his shoulders with a bright smile before letting go herself. He finds Matt next, who has just set down the tray, and nearly knocks them both over with the force of his embrace. They wind themselves together until Foggy isn't quite sure which limbs are his and which are Matt's, and Foggy suspects that he's not the only one crying. When they finally separate, Matt's silly chef hat has been knocked completely off his head, his hair standing up at crazy angles, but he doesn't seem to notice or care.

"Thank you," Foggy says, his voice strangled, his broken eyes dazzled with love and the soft sunset light of the city, his city. "I can't even... I'm... I love you guys so much. Thank you."

\--

The scare that sent him to Philadelphia on a tear wakes Foggy up in other ways, too. He finally begins to understand how much he has been treading water, acting as though everything is fine, like the Good Days haven't been thinning out, stretching fewer and farther between until he has to redefine what a Good Day looks like. He thought he'd been preparing, watching Matt and practicing with the cane and memorizing routes through his home, but he'd only been shoving everything to the back of his mind. So, as soon as he wakes up the morning after his evening in "Paris," he calls Matt's doctor, the specialist, and makes an appointment, which he actually attends. The doctor is brusque and professional and helps Foggy find resources for living with vision loss; "Blind Lessons," as Foggy calls them in his head. He looks into getting a seeing-eye dog because dogs are awesome, no matter what Matt says. Karen even helps him do some research on therapists who work with recently blinded people, and Foggy buys her cookies from her favourite bakery to thank her.

He thinks he's doing quite well.

Of course, absolutely none of this prepares him for the morning he wakes up and his world has gone finally, permanently black.

At first he thinks he is maybe still dreaming, so he buries his head in his pillow and hits "snooze" on his alarm without opening his eyes. Nine minutes later, his alarm rings again, jolting him from his doze, and when he opens his eyes, he finally realizes what has happened, and the panic consumes him like a flash fire until he can't hear anything but the dull roar of rushing blood in his hears. He's dimly aware that he has begun to hyperventilate as his head jerks around like some grotesque marionette impersonation, uselessly searching for any corner or flame of light he might be able to focus on. His fingers clench and unclench around his sheets ( _are they my sheets?_ he thinks as the panic ratchets up another notch, _am I even in my own apartment?_ ); he squeezes his eyes closed against the truth and buries his face in his pillow. Wails once, twice into the tear-soaked fabric--the sound of a child abandoned in the wilderness. He finds himself curled in the fetal position without remembering quite how he got there, legs folded tight into his chest. High, whining sobs replace the wailing and, though he'll never be able to confirm it visually, some remote part of his brain informs him that he looks absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually, the panic levels off and slowly releases its grip on Foggy, and he can hear his own ragged gasps still pressed into his pillow, now waterlogged. His first coherent thought is to call Karen and tell her he won't be in to work. He reaches for his phone, feeling around for a moment before finding it; then, he completely blanks. He _can't see it._ It's a damned touch screen. Everything he's been practicing for, the accessibility controls, the voice commands, have flown entirely out of his head. Even in these past few weeks he's been using the accessibility functions almost exclusively as his vision deteriorated, but the panic starts to creep in again as he stares in the direction of his hands, and he can't think of the next damn step.

"No," Foggy commands himself out loud. "Stop." His own voice rings loud in his ears; strangely, it's what finally grounds him enough to sit up and completely catch his breath. Dizziness swamps him as he moves to vertical and he cannot stop blinking, trying to clear the vision he no longer has. His brain stutters, tries to adjust to the contradiction of having his eyes wide blown-open and seeing only blackness.

His phone alarm goes off for the third time. Seven sixteen a.m. His phone was the last thing he looked at before falling asleep the night before, he remembers. Not a sky salted with stars, or the red Manhattan sunset, or the faces of his friends or anything worth remembering. Just a fuzzy dim impression of his phone's lock screen with its boring stock photo background, setting his stupid alarm and turning the screen off with a click.

This time when he cries, muffling the sobs with his hands, his whole body heaves with despair instead of panic, an awful, sucking feeling that tears through his chest and leaves him hollow.

\--

"Karen?" he croaks into the phone, an hour later.

"Foggy, hey!" she says. Her voice is bright, but there's a hint of concern lurking there as well. "Where are you?"

His grip tightens on the blanket covering his knees. He's managed to make it to the living room, his progression embarrassingly slow, hands stretched out tremblingly until they hit the piece of furniture nearest to his bedroom, his old sofa, and he sat down gratefully. Logically, somewhere beyond the low-buzzing panic and the dizziness, he's marveling at himself, at how unsteady he feels without his eyes, even in his own home. _Matt was right,_ he thinks, grudgingly. _This is nothing like practicing with my eyes closed._

"I'm not going to be in today," he says as steadily as he can. He's honestly not sure he could even make it to the bottom floor of his apartment building without another panic attack. "It's... It happened. I'm blind."

"Oh, Foggy," Karen says quietly. Suddenly he hears Matt in the background, making questioning noises. Then it's Matt's voice speaking into the phone.

"You're sure?" Matt asks into the phone, brisk and clipped.

"Pretty damn sure, yeah," Foggy snaps back.

"Karen, close up, please," Matt orders. His voice softens a little and he turns back into the phone. "We'll be over as soon as we can, Foggy."

"No, Matt, you don't--" But Matt has already hung up Karen's phone, and Foggy doesn't bother calling back.

They make it to his apartment in fifteen minutes flat, which has to be some kind of record considering the amount of annoyed honking he can hear outside. When he finally shuffles to the door and opens it, he tries to smile at them. He can feel it wobbling on his face.

Karen reacts first, coming in for a hug, and Foggy flinches hard at the unexpected contact, her touch jarring his already jangling senses.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," she apologizes when she pulls away. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's fine. You didn't have to come."

"Have you called your doctor yet?" Matt asks, his voice moving past Foggy and into Foggy's entry way. Foggy tries to listen to his footsteps and turns in his general direction, but of course he has no idea how accurate he is.

"No," he throws out into the black. Then he freezes in momentary panic--he turned so fast, so instinctively, to face Matt, that he forgot to ground his sense of direction by grabbing a wall or door frame, and now he's not sure which direction he's actually facing. He reaches behind him, searching for the wall, and finds only air. Suddenly dizzy, he leans back too far and stumbles over his own feet.

"Um... Karen?" He determinedly manages to keep his voice light and joking and steady, does not, does not let the hot shame bleed through, even a little. "Mind helping a brother out over here?"

"Yeah," comes the little whisper from somewhere in front of him, and then her voice is closer, and he can smell her shampoo. "On your right," she says as she takes his elbow and leads him, hesitant but trying to trust her, to the couch. He sits back down and resolutely does not sigh with relief.

"That will get better quickly," Matt says, somewhere on Foggy's left. The armchair, Foggy thinks. "The disorientation, I mean. Especially in familiar spaces."

"Oh, good," Foggy says. "I've only been awake for an hour and I'm already sick of not knowing where my own bathroom is." There's an awkward silence, and Foggy sighs. "Kidding, guys. I know where the damn bathroom is."

"You should call the doctor," Matt says. "Let him know it's progressed."

"I know," Foggy replies, running a hand over his face. He's still blinking too much, still trying to find light where there is none. "I will."

"How are you feeling?" Karen asks, beside him. Their knees are touching, and she's fidgeting a little.

He doesn't mean to be cruel; it's an innocent question, and Karen doesn't pity him, she just wants to know how he feels, and he _knows_ this, but he bristles anyway and his words come out in angry, sarcastic bites. "Other than being fucking blind, I'm spectacular. How's life treating you?"

"Foggy," Matt snaps.

Foggy's logical half is telling him to cool it, that they care about him, that there is absolutely no reason to explode but the anger bubbles up so fast, so rough and and violent that he has to clench his fists to keep from hitting something. "What, am I not allowed to be angry about this? I'm sure you were a perfect darling after your accident, but we can't all be Saint Matthew." It's a name he's only ever used gently and jokingly and the past; now he throws it like a javelin, intending to hurt. He can't see the wince, but by the silence that follows, he's pretty sure he hit his mark.

He's suddenly itching, the horrible irrational fury crawling under his skin, so he pushes himself up and walks, hands out, to his kitchen. He finds the fridge fairly quickly and feels around inside until he finally grabs the neck of a beer bottle. He hears footsteps walking toward him, heavier, indicating Matt. They stop nearby.

"Foggy," Matt murmurs. He takes a halting breath, like he wants to say something else, but instead he moves forward and wraps his arms around Foggy's shoulders. This time Foggy manages not to flinch, but it's a close call. The anger still festers in Foggy's chest, but he forces himself to stay, to not pull away. Trying to take the comfort Matt wants to give him, he rests a hand on Matt's back, the soft fabric of his jacket sliding under his fingers.

"Sorry," he mutters into Matt's shoulder.

"Get some sleep." Matt presses the words into Foggy's hair, so gentle it almost tears Foggy in half, and breaks the embrace. Foggy nods, knowing Matt can sense it.

When Matt and Karen leave, the door closed with a soft click behind them, Foggy opens his beer and takes a long, long drink.

\--

The next several days are a study in the nine levels of hell. Foggy gains more bruises and scrapes than he's had since he was a child playing carelessly in the streets of Hell's Kitchen. His parents visit on that first day, a few hours after Matt and Karen leave, clearly expecting him to break down into tears and let them hold him, but the dull fury still churning it's ugly way through his system keeps him stone-faced, at arm's length. His good humor and usual jokes only fly when they have sharp barbs attached, meant to wound. His parents leave bewildered and sad, promising to call, and he hates their pity.

Slowly, agonizingly, he works outward in a rough spiral to expand his comfort zone inch by inch; the bedroom-bathroom-living room-kitchen circle gains the hallway closet, the storage area, the hallways around the building, and eventually the lobby. He manages to call the doctor on the second day, but he's booked completely up and can't see Foggy for another week and a half.

Matt and Karen both call him and text him every day, though they don't come over uninvited again. Foggy doesn't pick up their calls, only listlessly listens to his phone read out their text messages. He knows they're worried when he doesn't answer; he can hear it in the spaces between their words, the way they don't talk about It, only keeping him informed on how their cases are going and telling him inane silly stories about their day. One morning, as Foggy walks by his front door, he trips over something flat and hefty; when he picks it up, he discovers that it's a file folder filled with research on their latest case, typed up in Braille, and, presumably, slipped under his door.

Once, in college, Foggy had given in to the curiosity and, when Matt was at the library studying one night, he'd tied a handkerchief over his eyes and walked around their dorm room. It had been unexpectedly awful; each time his foot or shoulder caught the edge of something, a wall or a piece of furniture, he'd gotten angrier and angrier until he had ripped the handkerchief off and threw it as hard as he could, his heart racing to beat the band.

That same fitful, helpless rage simmers in him now, multiplied tenfold now that there's no handkerchief to rip away. It finally boils over three days After, when he miscalculates where the end table is for approximately the thousandth time, and stubs his pinky toe on the wooden leg. The leash breaks and he _screams,_ something wordless and horrible. He drives his foot into the end table over and over until the heavy wood rattles. He sweeps his arm around until he finds the lamp perched on top of the table, some ugly green monstrosity that he would give anything to be able to see again, and throws it as hard as he can. It lands somewhere to his front-left with an immensely satisfying crash. The table upends, finally, with a thud and he kicks at it one last time; but this time he misses, kicking only empty air, and the momentum knocks him to his knees. His kicking foot throbs, wet with what he assumes is his blood; his knees sing from where they hit the floor. He screams again, and it feels like he's exorcising some demon that's had its hold on him ever since his world went dark.

Eventually his screams are just echoes bouncing around his apartment, and he's empty, gasping, his entire body left feeling bruised and mottled, a wasteland of color he can't see. The demon is gone, nothing but despair left in its wake. He stays on the floor for a long time, past the point of his knees aching against the hard wood, past the point of his back going stiff like an old man's. His apartment has gone cold by the time he gets up, the pathetic warmth of the late autumn sun leeched away with the turning of the earth, and begins the slow process of blindly cleaning up his mess.

\--

He still dreams in color, in bright, happy scenes. His waking hours are the nightmare; when he's asleep, he can see again, the faces of his friends and family perfectly sharp and clear. Matt, his teeth shining as he smiles, knuckles clear of bruises, no new stab wounds to speak of. Karen, all her golden hair hung over one shoulder in soft glossy curls, her shoulders weightless and free of burden. His parents, pushing him on some swing set in Brooklyn. His sisters, their braids flying, chasing him around the house.

Waking up is agony. There are a few days after he breaks the lamp when he just checks completely out of linear awareness; he unplugs his new talking clock, silences his phone alarm. He eats when he's hungry, so he doesn't eat; he sleeps when he's tired, so he's almost constantly in bed. The days and nights bleed and blend together so easily that it's almost hard to believe there was ever a reason for the distinction. Sometimes he wakes up with tears on his face; sometimes he makes it halfway to the kitchen for a glass of water before forgetting what he was doing and going back to bed; sometimes he doesn't open his eyes for hours, making bargains with himself that if he just waits another few minutes he'll be able to see again once he does open them.

Some time later, he wakes up from a dream in which Matt was chasing him across the Columbia campus dressed in his Daredevil suit, both of them laughing crazily, and he feels somehow, infinitesimally better. He orders his phone to read out the date and time for him: "Sunday, November third, 5:35 p.m." says the toneless voice. Four days. He's been checked out mentally, despair drowning him and starving him, for four days. He runs one hand down his face, tiredly, listens to his furnace kicking on, his refrigerator running, the tv murmuring still from when he turned it on some two or three days ago so that he wouldn't drown in the dark. He blinks a few times, still searching for a light, but just like before, he doesn't find one.

He sighs and gets out of bed. Plugs his clock back in, corrects the time. Sets his alarm for Monday morning. Turns off the tv. Sits on his couch, feels around for the folder Matt or Karen had slipped under his door. Finds the first Braille bumps with his fingers and begins to read.

\--

He goes back to work the next day, still limping ever so slightly from destroying his end table. He takes a taxi, still not trusting his sense of direction anywhere other than his apartment building, and clutches his cane as he tentatively steps out onto the sidewalk, into the brisk November air.

"Door's right in front of ya, 'bout ten feet," the taxi driver says helpfully.

"Thanks," Foggy says, and he means it. He makes it to their second floor office door without incident, and, with a deep breath, pushes it open.

\--

It's not easy. It's the hardest thing he's ever done, getting up every day and going back to work, asking for help with things he never used to even think about. More than once he finds himself snapping at Karen, punching a wall so he doesn't aim for Matt, breaking down into frustrated tears. He goes to therapy and starts taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. Some days it seems impossible to take one more step without wrapping a rope around his neck and kicking a chair out from underneath him.

But Karen is patient, and Matt is understanding. When he cries, they hold him; when the trips or runs into things, they patch him up with gentle fingers; when he apologizes for yelling at them, they forgive him, easy as a breeze. The days he can't get out of bed begin to dissipate, grow fewer and farther between, until they're mostly a distant memory.

One day, several months after his eyes fail, he's laughing at something Matt said, and his chest feels lighter than it has in a long while. After a moment, he realizes that Karen has gone abruptly silent, and he turns in her direction.

"Karen?" he asks. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," she says softly. There's a grin creeping at the edges of her voice. "It's just... I think that's the first time I've seen you really smile since October."

It's the first of many.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a poem found on allpoetry.com, by the user Exmyheartout.


End file.
